Have you ever been traumatized by someone or something?

Edit. It was my fault and I can’t even talk about it.

I was raped when I was fifteen by two male friends of mine. I told a couple friends after it happened and they didn’t believe me. I felt dirty, lost and alone.

The results? I learned at an early age that I was just a piece of meat. It took me years to believe I was more than just the body I live in. My entire high school experience was being used by guys because I didn’t think I had anything else to offer.

Crying, @dammitjanetfromvegas….. ((( )))

I traumatized myself in my teen years. I never knew I could do the harmful things I’ve done…

I would suggest caution asking this question. It may contain sensitive information about individuals, and it has the potential to trigger the victim and others who may be sensitive to certain stories.

Why do you need this information?

I think it’s a good question. If they don’t want to answer @Hawaii_Jake, they don’t need to. If they don’t want to read, they don’t have to.
If people want to share their stories, they can. They aren’t sharing “sensitive information” about anyone other than themselves. If you’re concerned flag the mods and let them decide.

Besides, the vast majority of the time noone needs the information they ask about in their questions.

I was stung by a wasp once, and now I am terrified of yellow-black insects.
I was also once startled by an aggressively barking doge. Now I want them all killed.

@Hawaii_Jake: Need is not a word I’d use to describe 99% of the questions that are asked on this site. Like @Dutchess_III said, if someone doesn’t want to answer, they are free to scroll down past.

“Trauma is an emotional response to a terrible event like an accident, rape or natural disaster. Immediately after the event, shock and denial are typical. Longer term reactions include unpredictable emotions, flashbacks, strained relationships and even physical symptoms like headaches or nausea. While these feelings are normal, some people have difficulty moving on with their lives. Psychologists can help these individuals find constructive ways of managing their emotions.” copied from http://www.apa.org/topics/trauma/

This is a very sensitive subject you’re asking about. This is not about recounting tales of skinned knees on the playground at school. These are life-altering events that lead to decades of anguish that some people never move beyond. These events cause serious mental problems, inability to form any meaningful relationships, loss of family, loss of jobs, and can even end in suicide of the victim.

Puerile curiosity is unhelpful. Careful, compassionate listening in a therapeutic setting is what is needed.

I am a mental health professional. I see the devastation wreaked by trauma every day. I am a victim of childhood trauma.

You are welcoming re-victimization. You are playing the part of a bully by insisting it is the responsibility of the victim to avoid triggers, which is what you are saying by stating if this question is offensive, then people should simply scroll on by.

I suggest we all practice empathy.

Fluther gave me the first opportunity to speak about my rape since it happened almost 30 years ago. A question similar to this was asked not long after I first joined almost 7 years ago. I was able to discuss what happened to me with other women who experienced the same trauma. There are many of us and we are all still friends on Facebook.

I’m very thankful for Fluther for giving me the chance to discuss what happened to me.

@dammitjanetfromvegas It gives me great joy to know you found solace and help here on Fluther. I suggest that we all reach out to each other with empathy like you found. I am not sure this particular question is striving for that end.

@Hawaii_Jake she is not “welcoming re-victimization.” There is nothing in her post to suggest she is not empathetic. You are making a mountain from a mole hill.
You seem to think she has some sinister agenda, and I don’t know why. Maybe something bad happened to her, or to someone she knows, and she’s asking how others coped with it.

@Dutchess_III Asking victims to recount their trauma can trigger them and lead to very bad states that can be truly difficult to emerge from in any kind of wholesome way. There are ways to word these types of questions that are empathetic and compassionate. I do not find those ways of relating to victims in this OP.

I welcome chances to talk about trauma in general and my personal trauma. My story is my greatest asset in life. Through 30 years of therapy, I was able to heal. That is not available to many people. I am now in a position to offer safe places on many different mediums to victims to heal. Each healing journey is unique and must be carefully nurtured.

I do not see a nurturing attitude in this OP.

When we create a safe space, healing can happen. This particular OP and thread do not feel safe. When I wrote my first post here, I used the “whispering” font to show that was aware of the difficulties. I was met with rudeness.

I am asking for awareness of the delicate nature of this topic.

THEY DON’T HAVE TO RECOUNT THEM IF THEY DON’T WANT TO!

You’re being ridiculous.

I agree @Dutchess_III. Some of the things that I am thinking of have been said here already by others on this site. Again, if someone doesn’t want to answer, nobody is forcing them to.

@Dutchess_III There’s no need to shout.

Right. Something came to my mind that happened really recently but I didn’t want to rehash it. Too painful. So I didn’t.
I’m responsible for my own mental health, just as I am responsible for the food I eat.

@Dutchess_III I am glad you are strong. There are a great many people alive right now who for reasons beyond their control do not share your type of strength, and it is the responsibility of every other breathing human on the planet to lift them up and give them a chance to heal.

I am going to go create safe spaces now.

Aloha.

If she was targeting a specific Jelly, I’d agree with you 100%.

And yelling feels good sometimes.

If I have, I have blocked them out.

To answer my own question, I was in a car accident once where I was a passenger. For about two years after that, I’d be a nervous passenger in anyone’s car, especially when I felt they were stepping on the brake. I’d press my foot into the floor, as if I could control the vehicle myself.

I also lived in an apartment building that burned in a fire. I was always scared of fire, but to this day, I’m a little extra hyper-vigilant. If my smoke alarm goes off, I panic. Once I burned lamb chops in the oven, and there was some fire, and it was upsetting. Not where I was in the fetal position or anything, but it was pretty nerve wracking and I envisioned the ceiling going up in flames and being homeless once again, due to the house burning. Luckily, that didn’t happen and I shut the oven off and the flames on the chops stopped, but it was a few minutes of definite panic.

A medical issue, a parent, and a social group. I’ve told all the stories before, but I’m willing to do so again if people are interested. I’m not triggered by recounting. I am triggered by being placed in those situations or seeing others go through them.

I nullify through avoidance.

Witnessing death at a young age, I still feel like I see them everywhere. If that makes sense.

Sexual assault. Because of it, I’m the typical “afraid of men” gal. Or so people say.

And just recently, my friend and I got into an accident involving multiple cars, and a semi. I can’t get the sounds out of my mind, nor the names of the few who died.

Oh, I’m so sorry @FeelTheBern. But if it helps, the vast majority of women are cautious, if not outright afraid, of men.

I’m listening @Seek.

I guess I’ve never had any real trauma in my life. Well, my mom screamed a lot, and just went absolutely bat shit over the smallest of things. I pretty much moved out at 18, when I went to college. When I was 19 she and dad divorced and she moved 2000 miles away, to Washington. I visited her when I was 21. She had just gotten one of the first microwaves. Something happened, I don’t remember what, but she wasn’t able to get it going again. She started to go into melt down over it, screaming that it was brand new and it was already BROKEN,and I started panicking, trying desperately to fix the problem. I frantically started pushing buttons, and happened to push the “stop” button again, and that reset everything and it worked fine.
A few seconds of silence, then she said, “Well, I really over reacted, didn’t I.”
I just shrugged my shoulder and didn’t say anything, but it’s not like her behavior was surprising.
I just hadn’t had to deal with it for a couple of years, and when I did, even though I was an adult, I felt like a frightened five year old desperately trying to fix whatever it was that had Mom so angry and screaming.

I had an auto accident last week which totaled my car. I wasn’t physically hurt but ever since that day I find myself exceedingly nervous behind the wheel of my new car. I’m driving very badly and in fact have had a couple of near-accidents because if my wandering mind.

I keep replaying the accident and think how much worse it could have been. No question in my mind that I was traumatized.

Yes, by a few things. My childhood was extremely bad in many ways. Both of my parents were addicts – one drugs, one alcohol – my father was physically abusive toward my mother, my sister and I were literally abandoned by my mother after the divorce, other stuff I’ve never talked about in here. My best friend’s suicide. A “friend” gave me a date rape drug on my 17th birthday. Etc., etc. I have a rough life.

But, I managed to make it this far somehow and I think I turned out alright. Somehow.

Well, I think you did, @DrasticDreamer. That’s a lot of shit to go through. I’m glad you made it through.
Some of you guys just humble me.

I do not get the impression that this was asked simply for entertainment purposes. My interpretation of this question is that the OP was hoping to hear from people who have overcome their traumas and discussion the process of moving beyond the lingering effects. Granted, that is not conveyed in the primary Question title, but it seems pretty clear in the Details—perhaps the OP could flag their own Question and asked the Mods to kick it back for editing, so it can be changed to something like, “Do you have any experience of or advice for overcoming a past trauma?”.

.
I have spoken here many times of my molestation and abuse in childhood, as well as my divorce and the subsequent death of my ex while our child was still young. I have also spoken about the car accidents I’ve been in, including the one where I was run off the road and rolled the car. I’ve talked about my ‘rock bottom’ and the attempted suicide. For me, talking about my experiences – especially in the context of helping others cope with their own by letting them know they are not alone – has been the biggest help in my processing the feelings and coming to a place of peace with my past and myself.

As for the car accident, that trauma for me resulted in the eye-opening that every day from that moment is bonus time. I did not have a lingering PTSD or develop any phobias because I had previously gotten to a place where I don’t have much fear of death. Thus, I can not offer advice to help overcome the anxiety that comes with the realization that one has zero control, beyond proper positioning of their seat and seat belt, when they are a passenger in any vehicle. Personally, I would suggest trying to focus on the underlying fears, rather than on the specific environment in which they currently manifest.

Doctors. More than one, but certainly not all. I had a chronic illness, chronic pain, and over and over again I felt like no one was listening to me. They did tests, sometimes twice, when I knew they would be negative, and even if it came up negative they ran the tests again. They gave me drugs, they cut me, I got back scary diagnosis (what’s the plural of that word?) even from labs looking at biopsies, that later were reevaluated and given a different diagnosis.

I had constant anxiety for years. Partly from being sick, but partly from being paralyzed regarding doctors. I wanted them to help me, but avoided them, sometimes years at a time. When I would see a doctor and felt ignored or abused I’d sometimes have recurring nightmares nightly for weeks. Dreams of being chased and then stabbed or shot. I was desperate in the dreams, terrified of being harmed.

What helped was finding doctors who agreed with me and treats me. What helped most was finally being treated so I no longer had pain every day.

Another thing that helped was realizing doctors only know what they know and medicine is limited. However, I do not forgive the doctors who ignored my symptoms and instead chose to follow idiotic theories about what was wrong with me.

Lastly, having more than one interaction with good and helpful doctors not just for this problem, but for others too, helped me calm down.

It’s still hard for me. When I have a pain I ignore it for weeks, unless I “know” it’s something that must be treated. I’ve had a weird pain near my knee. The pain is extremely bad (about an 8 or 9) when I lean on the knee, but otherwise nonexistent. I haven’t gone to the doctor for it. Procrastinating. I don’t believe I’ll get a diagnosis, but I’m starting to think I have to try soon.

When I had pain on the side of my face I took an aspirin and tried to ignore it. I hoped it wasn’t something awful like a blood clot. It happened twice for several days and then went away. The third time I developed a rash on my forehead and I instantly knew! It was a Sunday and within 20 minutes my husband and I were in the car to urgent care. Shingles. Close to my eye.

I still am shocked when I have a good interaction with a doctor. I’m so grateful when it happens.

I caught my penis in the zip of my trousers when I was a kid, the scream could only be heard by dogs, more than a mile away.

Meant to say I had a rough life. I always miss autocorrect mistakes when I answer from my phone. @Dutchess_III Thank you. I came out of it all with extreme trust issues, but I’m working on changing stuff for the better.

Apparently this became a novel. Sorry.

My mother and father had a mutually toxic relationship. I got along well with my dad when he was sober, not at all with my mom. Lots of negative memories include both parents, but she’s mostly not present in any of my positive memories of childhood.

When I was eight, during summer vacation after third grade, Mom said we were going to visit Nanny and Pop-Pop in Florida for a few weeks. We packed one suitcase full of clothes and a few toys apiece (I have two younger siblings) and hopped on a plane. I started smelling bullshit when I was enrolled into fourth grade in Florida. Halfway through that school year we moved in with my mom’s new boyfriend, into a tiny camper trailer with no electricity in his parents’ backyard. We lived there for six months. That’s where I learned how to cook over a campfire. Then we landed a spot at a HUD apartment complex.

As a depressed ten year old living with a mother who never cared about her and her angry, pilled-out, disabled boyfriend, and responsible for two kids myself (mom always worked, stepdad was broken. I cleaned, prepared meals, did laundry, helped with homework, got the kids off to school, etc.), I was easy pickings for the HUD-crawling church recruiters. This particular church happened to be owned by my new “stepfather”‘s brother so “stepdad” was more than happy to let me get roped in.

That Kim Davis chick from the news? Same church. I was very devoted and eventually became involved in ministry. By 20 years old I was spending at least five days a week at the church as well as holding a full time job. I had no friends who were not members of the church. I never dated anyone that wasn’t a member of the church. I married my first boyfriend, who I met at the church.

When I was 21 my mother beat me for the last time. An argument over whether I would drive 45 minutes out of my way to buy her a candy bar while on the way to bring my sister home from an outing turned into me being held against the wall by my throat and repeated hit in the face. My arms were scratched to pieces and I was heavily bruised. I drove away, called my husband, who insisted I go back and call the police and wait in the driveway for them to show up. My mom drove away. They picked her up the next morning.

The following day was Sunday church service. Word had already gotten out that I had called the police on my mother. Apparently the Fifth Commandment was one of the ones they took super-seriously, because I was asked not to take my Sunday School class, nor to set up the A/V equipment. Beyond that, no one would speak to me. For two weeks.

Realising nothing would get better, I attempted to begin attending the sister church the next town over. Yeah, same problem.

A few weeks later I found out I was pregnant. In a flurry of grasping-for-maternal-support, I allowed myself to get roped in to the religion of midwifery. Doctors? Hospitals? They’re cold and calculating and awful! People die in hospitals! Don’t you love this lovely cabin surrounded by oak trees with the lovely British lady promising you a drug free natural birth just as God intended?

I had hyperemesis. I failed the gestational diabetes test (midwife fudged the numbers). I gained less than 10 lbs the entire pregnancy. I went two-weeks postdates without ever having a contraction, and still they promised that I could have a lovely natural birth.

At the two week mark, I had to be transferred by law to an obstetrician. I didn’t know one. My midwife had to go to England for a relative’s delivery. I was completely alone. I was blindly transferred to a complete stranger and taken to the hospital to be induced on the same day.

After ten months of having natural birth drilled into my head, I was feeling like my body had failed me already. I wasn’t allowed to walk around due to the fetal monitors, but I was still determined to deliver without painkillers.

28 hours of extreme back labor later, I finally asked for an epidural. It killed my legs, but not the pain.

37 hours into labor I finally had a healthy 10½ lb. baby boy. I don’t remember the actual birth because…

2 hours later I began to haemorrhage.
I lost 4½ lbs of blood clots before they were able to stop the bleeding. I don’t know how long it took or what they did to stop it, but I was told that I was about 30 seconds away from an emergency hysterectomy. I remember being very cold and I remember flashes of extreme pain. Like, 15 on a scale of 10 pain. Please just kill me if you can’t stop it pain.

**************

The results of this:
I have a hard time forming emotional bonds with people. I don’t trust anyone. I don’t make friends in the sense that most people do. There are people I take part in specific activities with, or people I talk to about subjects that we are mutually interested in. But once they’re like “Hey, wanna just hang out?” I can’t do it. I can’t let anyone that close to me. I’ve had panic attacks when I’ve been around other people having emotional breakdowns or fighting with friends. I do not have the ability to cope with interpersonal politics.

I’ve also become a steadfast skeptic and the whole “crunchy” movement of naturopaths and chiropractic frauds literally make me shake with rage.

Fluther Um…can’t think of any one thing that traumatized me like that.

Last week I was in an accident that totaled my car. I wasn’t injured but ever since then I’ve been hugely nervous driving and can’t stop thinking how close I came to a real tragedy. No question in my mind that I’m in a state of trauma.

Mmm, didn’t mean to post my take twice.

I was First Medic for the local ambulance service for 7 years. Over 2000 active service hours, hundreds of calls. But there were a few times I wish I was not the person on the call.
High speed motorcycle accident.
CPR on Mr. Cxxxxxx… with his wife watching me through the viewing port in the rig. Awful eye contact.
Trapped in the back with the teen holding a box cutter and hissing at me, and me tensing and lining up the metal clip board to smash into his throat if he moved toward me.
Yeah I could have done all right without those.

But my “traumas” are nothing when compared to some of what I just read above.
You all are so strong.

@Seek After a very bad rib injury, chiros were the only ones who helped me at all. My rib always pops out and every time they get it back in, I breathe better and the pain decreases significantly. If it wasn’t for them, I don’t think I’d have seen any progress at all.

@DrasticDreamer There are some chiropractors that are helpful. They crack backs and go no further. Then there are chiropractors who manipulate newborn infants as a treatment for allergies and preventative measures against autism. Those people should be drawn and quartered at high noon.

@Seek Definitely no disagreement there. Glad I’ve never come across any of them. :-/

More times than I care to admit. Detailing them all would make @Seek‘s post above look terse by comparison. I don’t normally let on too much in public forums, but I’ll open give you a short, partial list;

- Three major accidents (two car, one work) that left me physically incapacitated for a month or longer
– Physically abusive father
– Losing most of my family to natural causes, none of whom even saw age 65 (one didn’t even see 40)
– A few situations not unlike @LuckyGuy‘s tales of his days as First Medic.
– Other things of that magnitude that I just don’t plan to reveal here

Suffice it to say that when you see me go off here, my reaction is often the result of something that either gave me at least one of the many scars I have or a current personal situation that I’m struggling to prevent from turning into another scar to add to my collection. I don’t like to talk about it much, not just for the obvious reasons (personal privacy, and unpleasant memories), but also because people who have their own sufferings tend to think I’m trying to one-up them.

@Seek I spent half the night reading your post. Well, I was watching a movie with Rick, and I came running in to read more during the commercials. I read it twice. My heart broke wide open. My heart broke for that 10 year old who was told they were “visiting” her grandparents…then the shock you must have felt when they enrolled you in school there. Everybody lying to you the whole time.

My heart broke for the young adult, who still hopes people will look after her and do things in her best interest, only to be betrayed again and again, to the point you almost died, and no one ever even said, “I’m sorry. We should have done things differently.”

I really was on the verge of tears while I was trying to watch the movie and it had nothing to do with the movie.

I wonder if I would be absolutely crazy insane by your age. The constant hurt, the constant betrayal, the memories….I don’t know if it helps at all but if you are batshit crazy there is no hint of it in your posts and comments. I just see a strong, intelligent, brave young woman who I love and admire greatly, one who has the coolest, most confident (from what I saw from the one brief video you shared with me) son in the world. For him to be that confident means he has a good Mom. More reason to be proud of yourself.

@jerv if you ever feel the need to unload you can PM me. Sometimes it helps to just write, to just free-flow and vent.

FB sent me a “memory” from 3 years ago today, November 6th, 2012, and it freaked me out. It was something I posted and it said:

“Kinda pissy at the moment so never mind me…

But these people at the hospital seem freaking clueless! I’ve been in this adjustable bed for two days, tied down with an IV. Well you know how the part that bends when you move the back rest up to watch TV or talk, and it leaves a gap that your lower back find of sinks in to—and you feel uncomfortably hyper extended? Well I told a nurse that we were going to fix it but I needed help…so I painfully got out of bed….then some one chased me out to BR (bathroom, I assume) since I was up.

Came back…and Einstien had flattened the bed out so that crack was no longer there!
“That should fix it!” she said. I guess I just stare at the ceiling for the next week.

I know I was in the hospital and I was dying, because that’s what everyone told me…but there I was, the day before surgery to save my life, posting like myself but reading it as a total stranger would. I have no memory AT ALL of this hospital stay. In fact I have no memory of the months preceding it…Sept and October. In fact, several memories going back a year or two were erased. I don’t know why my brain seemed to select certain memories over others, going back two years, to erase.

For example, a couple of days after I got out, my son brought his baby daughter over. She was a little over a year old. It was almost like I was seeing her for the first time. I was playing with her and I said, “Dang, man! Why haven’t I been hanging out with this kid more often?” They assured me I had been. Don’t remember. That hurts.

I was sick for weeks and weeks before this. No one realized it. I had been to several doctors and more than one ER visit during Sept and October for something, and I know this only because I had to pay the bills when I got back. I have no clue what I was telling them, but they kept giving me muscle relaxers and pain pills.

My daughter said I was starting to act strange, combative and almost cruel at times during those prior weeks. She said one time I said something off the wall, then suddenly stared at her like I had no idea who she was. She was scared. She thought I was getting dementia. It didn’t even cross her mind that it could be a physical thing.

I ended up having to apologize to a LOT of people for my behavior after that. It was so awful, so mean, so shameful, I was such a mean bitch, that I just wanted to hide. But I couldn’t.

On Sunday, October 28th my husband went out of town, to Vegas, on business. I was home alone that entire week. I didn’t go to work. In fact, I didn’t even call in to tell them I wouldn’t be there, I don’t think. However, I did TRY to work from home. I have the emails to prove it. I sound amazingly lucid for someone who was dying and higher than a kite on drugs.

My daughter came over every day to check on me. At one point she tried to take the drugs away, and I got combative and threatened to call the police.

My husband got home on Saturday night, November 3. It was late. We went to bed. The next morning we got up. We were having coffee on the deck and my husband got his first good look at me in a week…and about threw his coffee cup across the deck to get to me, to get me to a different ER than the last one we’d gone to, because I looked SO bad.
They X-rayed my lungs and threw me on an ambulance to Wichita. I’m pissed because I can’t remember the ambulance ride, and I’ve always wanted to ride in an ambulance.

A day or two after the surgery I suddenly….well, lights out. I said, “What are all those bees buzzing? They sound like they’re buzzing all around my head….” And I passed out and they couldn’t wake me up. I was in a coma-like state for 3 days, and no one knew why. Scared the living shit out of everyone who loved me. Didn’t bother me a bit, because I don’t remember any of it.

My first memory of all of Sept, Oct and half of November was of Rick driving me home from the hospital after I was released after two weeks. Ha! We pulled in to the drive way, and I did not recognize the house, nothing. I walked in. I didn’t recognize anything, but I remember thinking, “Wow! Someone has good taste in décor! And it’s so clean!” Rick cleaned and cleaned and cleaned in between visiting me at the hospital.

Those who really loved me knew I would appreciate them taking shameful advantage of my memory loss. The first Sunday in the hospital Rick turned the TV on to football. I hate football, but I didn’t know it. I asked him what he was doing. He said, “We’re watching the game! You LOVE football! You especially love the Kansas City Chiefs!”
I watched a few plays. They sucked so bad that I turned to Rick and said, “You’re so full of shit! I would not love a football team that plays like that!” But that is what Rick told me. I don’t remember it.

After I got home, and I DO remember this, my kids would come hang out. I remember them telling me I’d been in a coma for TEN YEARS!!! I stared at them, I stared at my dog, who was about 10 years old at the time, and who would DAID if she was 20, I stared at my 9 year old granddaughter, then proceeded to tell them ALL how full of it they were! They just laughed and laughed at the poor retarded invalid! Oh, the love. It burns. ;)

There was some humor it it, but for me, the most traumatic thing was the memory loss. I’m a women with a Rolodex memory, so losing even a little bit of it like that was, and still is, so strange and awful.

As time goes on I have to deal with it less and less. In the beginning though, I was faced with it constantly. Not long after I got home I walked into the dining room, and saw a very cool, framed picture of a French scene propped up on the floor, against a set of shelves there. I loved it. It was perfect for the dining room and I knew exactly the spot for it. And I had no idea where it came from, and that is not me. I can tell you where I got every single thing in my house, whether it was 40 years ago at a garage sale, or 30 years ago at a second hand store, and which second hand store, and how much it cost. Sometimes, in those early months, I’d talk to my old self and say, “Good call, Val!” In that way, I managed to kind of relate to my old self, via my new self, if that makes any sense. Instead of stressind so much, I tried to make peace with it.

It happens less and less now, obviously, but it’s pretty awful to have that big hole in your life like that. I’m just glad no babies were born during this time. I missed out on one birthday in September, for my granddaughter, who turned 9, but I was there because I saw a picture of me there. It was an indoor swimming party. I can feel the humidity, but I can’t remember anything else.
Also, she had on an incredible Halloween costume that Halloween. She was some Dead Bride or something and she was stunningly beautiful. I know this, because I took several pictures, which I saw later.

My daughter was traumatized though. About two years after all of that, I had reason to call her on my husband’s phone. She answered the phone hesitantly, almost like she was scared. I said, “Are you OK?”
She said, “Mom? Are YOU OK?”
I said, “Yeah. Why?”
She said, “Jesus! The last time this number showed up it was Rick calling to tell me you were dying! I HATE this number!”

I’m so sorry, Babies.

I remember that, Val – you poor thing. Did they ever find out what caused it all?

@Dutchess_III Thanks for the offer, but my wife is a good listener too.

Well, the doc said it was probably from smoking…but after discovering the black mold recently, and not knowing how long it’s been there, I wonder…..

@jerv but also because people who have their own sufferings tend to think I’m trying to one-up them.

I can easily see why people might think you are trying to one-up them. Your post began with a comparison to @Seek‘s traumas. You chose her as the one who answered this question with the worst traumas and compared yours to hers.

In fairness, he only said his story would be longer than mine.

And I would hardly claim that my trauma has been worse than anyone’s. My mommy didn’t love me and I had a bad day at the hospital. Many, many people have had worse. Much worse. The only thing special about my story is that it’s mine.

@dammitjanetfromvegas Actually, I chose to single out @Seek simply because her post had the highest word count of any in this thread at the time I wrote my first post here. Period.

We are here and ready to read, @jerv, if you want to share.

I’d always been a slender child. Then, when I was age 11, I suddenly developed a voracious appetite and started overeating. For the first time in my life, I was chubby/fat.

Nature had a plan. The following year, I hit puberty and literally grew 12”. My body knew what it was doing – I was about to have all those physical changes and a significant growth spurt. I was storing reserves for what was ahead of me.

One day at school, the girls in my class were changing for gym. While I was standing there in my underwear, the gym teacher walked up to me and loudly said, “Your father told me to run you around and get all that fat off you.” Then, she stood there smirking, while an entire roomful of girls stared at my body. After that day, my classmates called me “Fatty” or “Fatso.”

I still remember the mortification as if it happened yesterday. Of course, the following year, I grew out of all that weight and became slender again. But, I also developed a serious eating disorder and body dysmorphia that plagued me for about 20 years.

In adulthood, I learned that this gym teacher had been the victim of a murder-suicide. An ex-boyfriend had led her into the woods, at gunpoint, and shot her through the back of her head (before turning the gun on himself). The last moments of her life must have been horrific and terrifying beyond anyone’s imagination. When I heard the news, I honestly didn’t care; I couldn’t summon any feelings of empathy for her.

How horrible, @Love_my_doggie. The bitch.